Four years ago this weekend we were in Chatham. We spend a couple weeks every summer on Cape Cod, but that year we were lucky. Our friend Merlin invited us down for the holiday and we got in what the 8 year old who was then 4 called "a great mini bee-cation."
If you think of the Cape the way Thoreau described it, as "the bared and bended arm of Massachusetts: [with] the shoulder [at] Buzzard's Bay...the wrist at Truro; and the sandy fist at Provincetown, - behind which the State stands on her guard, with her back to the Green Mountains, and her feet planted on the floor of the ocean, like an athlete protecting her Bay, boxing with northeast storms..." Then Chatham, which Thoreau knew as Cape Mallabarre, is on the elbow.
I hadn't been down there in the Fall in 20 years and Saturday morning I got up early and went looking for differences between the elbow I knew from all our summer bee-cations and the elbow in autumn.
—At Lighthouse Beach .—Slick spots in the choppy water that look like skins of ice or spills of quicksilver.—Head of a cormorant periscoping out of the waves. 3 black ducks pushing themselves furiously through the air, leading with their heads, necks straining, as if in harness and dragging great weights behind them, which they are.—There seems to be more dune grass, and from the parking lot the point and the cove behind its dunes look much closer. Is that effect of the clarity of the air, perspective, or the difference in my fall self and my summer self? Do my eyes focus on different things? The sand looks a darker color that seems to be an effect not just in the change of light. Something is not in it that’s there in the summer. Water? A bacteria? Heat?
Every 25 ft or so stands a surf caster. One with a big white floppy double-billed hat. Throws his line out with a violence that comes from up high in his shoulder and travels swiftly down his arm and out his clenched fist as though he’s throwing a punch at a tall man who’s just insulted his mother, wife, dog, and favorite ball club all in one breath.
7:10 am. Sitting on the end of the footbridge by the Mill Pond.—Here water and light and clouds don’t jump at me with any differences between fall and winter. The marsh grass has thinned out, been matted down, something that in the summer grows tall and green has died down, revealing something else, or several something elses that grow short and show brown and blond. Tips of the broken reeds yellow. Swirls of gray and brown in the mix. A crow’s voice dominates the bird music instead of the screams of
the gulls. Since gulls and crows don’t migrate this is either a coincidence or a sign that crows grow more belligerent when the weather cools. Gulls become morose, thoughtful, draw their wings in tighter and lower their heads. They stare out to sea and ask gloomy, existential questions.
I read you, Lance. I found you through Nancy, and every day I check in to find some lovely bits of writing that inspire me to try out a few small crumbs of prose myself. Thanks for inspiration.
Posted by: Jill | Tuesday, October 12, 2004 at 11:11 AM
Thanks, Jill. I'm feeling way too proud of myself now. Good luck with your writing, and let me know from time to time how it's going.
Posted by: Lance | Tuesday, October 12, 2004 at 10:17 PM